Lythren Revamp!

Lythren have been revamped in terms of skills, while most of the background remains the same. Of note, they no longer have blindness to daytime but suffer their curse in other ways. They have also gained the ADAPTABILITY skill which allows them to make limited use of all weapons except bow.

The Problem with LythrenLythren have traditionally been difficult because of the Dark Vision curse, which prevented them from wearing glowing items and seeing during the daytime. The result was that most lythren characters logged off when daytime ticked over and played another character. We’ve made several attempts to lessen the impact, such as by allowing them to see in cloudy/raining weather and indoors. Since many NPC encounters are in the outdoors, this did not make lythren significantly less annoying to play. Vision would flicker in and out every few rooms because of sectors changing; field sector might be raining and visible, but hill sector is sunny and blinding. Initially, lythren were given all 25 stats, but under the old combat system, a 25 did not matter as much as it does now. It also did not make sense that a cursed race would be the smartest, strongest, most dexterous, and so on compared to all other races. The other ability that lythren had was Tail, which did a small amount of extra damage but did not compensate for missing light, feet, and leg slots.

The ChangesThese changes are now active in the game:

Blindness: Dark vision has been removed and exchanged for infravision. The lore seems to be unclear how many gods were upset at the lythren, but it seems unfair that all the current new gods would still be mad at them to maintain the severe blindness.

Stats: Years ago, all races had their stats rebalanced to have a similar total. Lythren were allowed 3 additional total stats compared to other races. This will remain.

Trip: Lythren became immune to trip since trip checks for whether the victim has legs.

Disfavor: Religions were rewritten so they could specify what traits they liked in followers and offerings. Lythren are disfavored by all religions, which penalizes them when they are hit by communes.

Piety: Since the helpfile has always said that lythren range from hating the gods to wanting to redeem themselves, lythren are permitted to seek religion. It will be an uphill battle and being accepted by a god makes you favored by them. That god will still dislike other lythren.

Racial Skill: Tail has been removed and exchanged for Adaptability. The idea is that since lythren learned to fend for themselves, they’re able to make use of whatever weapon they can find to do that. They are still most proficient at their own class’s weapons, but can use other weapons (not named “bow”) at up to 95% proficiency. They also gained use of the thrown skill at similar proficiency.

Slots: Lythren regained the light slot. Other races with infravision also have one, and it helps to equalize some of the equipment inequity.

Helpfile: Lythren helpfile has been slightly updated. There’s a little more detail about how ugly they are rather than just being humans with snek tails.

Classes: Lythren can no longer be vagabonds, which are our bard class. Lythren don’t sing for an audience after all.

Please keep an eye out for any bugs. I’ll be monitoring how lythren work and making changes as needed if this batch of changes is too powerful or not powerful enough.